Two articles I should have liinked to a little while ago: Clay Shirky’s Shirky: A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy and Ray Ozzie’s Extreme Mobility.
Shirky: ” This talk is in three parts. The best explanation I have found for the kinds of things that happen when groups of humans interact is psychological research that predates the Internet, so the first part is going to be about W.R. Bion’s research, which I will talk about in a moment, research that I believe explains how and why a group is its own worst enemy. The second part is: Why now? What’s going on now that makes this worth thinking about? I think we’re seeing a revolution in social software in the current environment that’s really interesting. And third, I want to identify some things, about half a dozen things, in fact, that I think are core to any software that supports larger, long-lived groups.”
Ozzie: “New programming, storage and interaction models will take us places we’ve not yet imagined. The PC is shifting from tethered personal productivity and document management toward mobile collaborative productivity, interpersonal communications, and media collection sharing & management. The phone is shifting toward mobile interpersonal communications and awareness, coordination and notification, as well as media playback, recording, and ‘squirting’….It’s going to take a new breed of software and services to get us from here, to there. Software born into a new era – designed specifically to emphasize media, communications and mobility. Built on top of platforms specifically created to enable these new capabilities…I believe we’re currently in a transition period for personal computing: from a tethered, desk-bound, personal productivity view, to one of highly mobile interpersonal productivity and collaboration, communications, coordination.”
